


Blaine's Muse

by fhartz91



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Artist Blaine, Character Death, Depression, Drinking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Flashbacks, Future Fic, Ghosts, M/M, Romance, Sexual Content, Suicidal Thoughts, Supernatural Elements, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-18
Packaged: 2018-12-02 04:02:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11501379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fhartz91/pseuds/fhartz91
Summary: Blaine is an artist with the perfect life, hopelessly in love with his husband and his muse, Kurt. But when a tragedy takes his muse away, how will he find the strength to go on?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is another re-write, one that I did extensive work on. I would like to think that this version of Blaine is more an adult Dalton!Blaine if he'd never gone to McKinley, with some Darren thrown in (particularly his potty mouth xD)

Blaine hated working over his vacations. Wasn’t the point of being a semi-famous artist that he got to make his own hours, work alone, and spend as much time at home having wild and crazy sex with his gorgeous husband as he wanted?

Not this time, apparently. No sir-ee. Since Sea Cliff Village Hall decided to do a complete renovation, including replacing their hospitality-grade art with original work from renowned local artists, he had been stuck in meetings and consultations all week while his husband occupied himself at their vacation home outside the city.

Kurt said he didn’t mind, seeing as they were doing some renovations of their own – a new work space for Blaine, an extension to Kurt’s studio … a nursery. Being alone gave Kurt the opportunity to match fabric samples to color swatches in peace without his husband intervening with his supposed “expert eye for nuance” and his hand down Kurt’s pants.

But Blaine had enough of forgoing afternoon sex in favor of another discussion over whether or not a Monet-inspired acrylic painting of waterlilies would be appropriate for the treasurer’s office or not. He snuck out quietly when a heated argument about abstract public sculptures for the main road islands broke out. He grabbed a blank canvas under the guise of starting a sketch and slipped away in his silver BMW. He hit the interstate and sped home, making it to their cottage in record time.

Blaine loved how secluded it was in this, their small patch of heaven. Tucked far and away from any other living souls, no one complained about the volume of their _amorous activities_ , be it at three in the afternoon, or three in the morning.

And the quiet was ideal for finding Kurt, since he sang whenever he was alone.

 _Usually_.

Blaine stood in the entryway and listened as he shed his jacket, his keys, and his phone, but he heard no singing. Kurt’s Navigator was parked outside so Blaine knew his husband was home. He wandered through the rooms with the canvas tucked beneath his arm, obnoxiously making as much noise as possible to alert his husband of his arrival.

“Kurt!” Blaine called, walking through the kitchen in search of his muse. “Kurt! Where are you, baby? I miss your incredible ass!”

“I thought you had to work this afternoon.”

“I  _am_  working,” Blaine explained. “I’m doing a portrait of a gorgeous man, as soon as I find him.”

“No,” Kurt chuckled. “You’re supposed to be doing a landscape for the city planner’s office.”

“No,” Blaine insisted, inspecting another empty room. “I’m painting _you_. _Naked_ if I have my way.”

“You just want to have sex,” Kurt teased.

“There’s nothing wrong with that. Now, where are you? This house isn’t that big.”

“Out here. I’m installing the track lighting.”

Blaine turned the corner to the patio that they had recently added on to give Blaine a protected outdoor work space, and there was Kurt – his _intrepid_ Kurt – braving their rickety, fifty-year-old ladder in order to install a row of lights. The chrome runner and bonnets gleamed in the midday sun, right in Kurt’s eyes, so he was installing them blind, his eyes shut against the reflected light, feeling around for the holes to put the screws in. Blaine winced when he saw the ladder shiver beneath Kurt’s weight, but Kurt seemed oblivious, balancing precariously on his toes to screw the fixture to the wall.

Blaine put the canvas down and held the ladder secure beneath his husband. “I really wish you’d let _me_ do that. Or, at least, wait till we buy a new ladder.”

Kurt looked down at Blaine with playful blue eyes. “Blaine, this ladder’s fine. Besides, I don’t have that much more to do. It’ll only take a ---” Kurt leaned sideways. The ladder lurched, and Blaine reacted in time to keep Kurt from toppling head first into the retaining wall.

“Okay, that’s enough,” Blaine said, pulling on Kurt’s pant leg. “Get down _now_.”

“But I only have one screw left.”

“I don’t care.” Blaine tugged more firmly. “Get your ass down off that ladder.”

“Geez.” Kurt huffed, climbing down the rungs. “You certainly have a thing for my _ass_.”

“Well, it happens to be a glorious ass.” Blaine grabbed Kurt’s behind and squeezed for emphasis. “I don’t want anything happening to it.” He drew Kurt close, relishing the way his husband’s body fit perfectly against his own, as if some higher power had carved them both out of the same slab of stone.

Like they had been specially made for each other.

Kurt tilted his head and pouted in mock offense. “So, you only care about my ass?”

“Among other things.” Blaine captured Kurt’s lips, not waiting for an invitation, trying his best to kiss the pout from Kurt’s lips.

If Kurt’s whimpers were any indication, Blaine was winning.

But Blaine’s cellphone, ringing where he’d left it by the front door, called a foul on his game. Blaine had no intention of stopping, but Kurt seemed to feel that job and responsibility came before _they_ did.

“Um, you should get that,” Kurt struggled to say, his voice muffled by Blaine’s lips pressing insistently against his.

“Nope.”

“But it’s probably city hall, wondering where their artist is.”

Blaine frowned as his husband squirmed to pull out of his arms, laughing at what Kurt called Blaine’s “grumpy face”. Blaine narrowed his eyes at his husband, his expression resolute.

“I’m going to go answer that, but just to tell them to get lost, and then I’m getting you naked.”

Blaine peppered Kurt’s cheeks with kisses to a symphony of his giggles. Then, with a heavy-handed swat to his backside, he reluctantly released his husband and ran inside to answer the phone.

Despite his frustration at having to put his sexual escapades with his husband on hold to answer the stupid phone, Blaine couldn’t help smiling. He loved his life. He loved his marriage. He especially loved the time they spent at their cottage off Long Island. He’d always be a city boy, but this place here was paradise. He loved bringing his husband here and having him all to himself. But recently he couldn’t help imagining a precious little boy or girl in the mix – one with Blaine’s raven curls or Kurt’s stunning blue eyes, who sang the same songs Kurt sang while he or she painted on a pint-sized easel at Blaine’s side.

Blaine and Kurt had been blessed with a wonderful five-year-long honeymoon. Now they wanted a family.

“Coming, coming,” he yelled at his insufferable phone, but he wasn’t exactly rushing to get it, and by the time he reached it, it stopped ringing.

“Oh, no,” he jokingly whined. “I didn’t get here in time. Whatever shall I do?”

It didn’t matter to him anyway, since no power on heaven or earth could have convinced him to leave his husband just as he was preparing to ravish him.

And to make sure they weren’t interrupted again, he turned his ringer off.

“Well, now that _that’s_ settled …”

A sudden sharp noise pricked at Blaine’s ears. Nothing too alarming. In fact, it could have been a bird chirping. But it filled him from head to toe with dread.

He didn’t know how he could possibly feel the ladder tilt from inside the house, but he felt the sway of it as if _he_ was standing on it instead of Kurt. After a swoop of sudden and inexplicable nausea hit him, everything happened absurdly fast. He heard Kurt yelp, a loud metallic clatter, then a horrifying crack, like pottery hitting the pavement.

“Kurt? Kurt!” Blaine screamed in panic, having the sense of mind to start dialing 9-1-1, knowing in his heart that his husband would need an ambulance. “Kurt, honey! Are you alri---?”

Blaine got his answer the second he burst through the patio door.

No, Kurt wasn’t alright.

Kurt definitely wasn’t alright.

***

It rained the day they buried Kurt.

It was such a marked change from the weeks of sunny skies and no clouds. Kurt had mentioned how they needed a good, all-day rain storm to trap them indoors, where they could snuggle together on the sofa and listen to the drops fall. Kurt was a quintessential pluviophile. He found peace in the rain.

Blaine _hated_ the rain. He hated getting wet. He hated when his soaked clothes stuck to his skin and cold water ran into his socks. He hated sloshing inside his shoes, and the way they never completely dried. But as much as he hated the rain, he loved Kurt, and the rain made Kurt happy.

So Blaine became a pluviophile for Kurt.

Blaine stood by Kurt’s casket beside his open grave and waited in the rain. He waited while the mourners paid their respects. He waited while everyone hugged and cried. He waited until the final mourner had wondered somberly away. He waited until they lowered Kurt into the ground, and even after there was nothing left to witness, he waited until nightfall, when the rain stopped, the clouds parted, and the stars came out.

Kurt’s father, Burt, returned to the cemetery a little before midnight in search of his missing son-in-law, to convince him to go home, but Blaine refused to leave. So Burt waited with him, not pressing the issue even though Blaine was sopping wet and stifling sniffles that he knew would bloom into a full-blown cold later on.

At some point, Blaine finally came to the conclusion that Kurt wasn’t going to magically return, so he took Burt’s hand and let himself be led away from his husband’s final resting place.

Blaine’s forehead burned with fever by the time Burt got him back to the summer house, but Blaine turned down Burt’s offer to stay. As much as Burt objected, as much as he put up a fight, in the end, he didn’t have the strength to battle his own grief and Blaine’s, and he left the man alone.

Blaine walked through the unlit house, straight out back to the patio, shoving aside a morbid sense of déjà vu. He sat heavily on the wicker chaise and looked up at the clear night sky, but his vision of the stars was obscured by something shiny hanging a few feet above his head.

The light fixture.

The stupid track lighting.

Blaine stared up at it in shock as it dangled on its two screws.

The fixture was there, brand new out-of-the-box, installed except for one damn screw, but because of it, Kurt was dead.

Blaine snapped.

He spotted an abandoned hoe over by the retaining wall, a few feet from where Kurt had fallen. He grabbed it and, with a renewed vigor, attacked the lights.

“Goddamned lights!” he screamed. “What the fuck did we need these for, Kurt? Why did you have to put them up when I asked you to wait!? Why didn’t you wait, Kurt!? Why couldn’t you just sit on your ass and fucking _wait_!?”

The sound of the hoe hitting the lights and the brick behind it echoed. The force of the blows caused the hoe to vibrate painfully in Blaine’s hands, but he only tightened his grip and struck harder.

“Fuck you, Kurt! Why did you have to put up these stupid lights!?” Blaine screamed, shattering the bulbs and sending a spray of glass falling over his hair and clothes. “I told you to wait! I told you I’d do it! I don’t need the lights, Kurt! I need _you_ , Kurt!”

He pounded the bonnets flat, chipped away a good portion of the brick wall, but it didn’t make him feel better. He didn’t feel avenged. He could pick those lights apart piece by piece, chop them up until they became dust, but that wouldn’t bring his husband back. And why was he taking out his anger on the lights? He should turn that hoe on himself. Why the fuck hadn’t he just held the ladder till Kurt finished? He knew how stubborn his husband was, how determined he’d be to finish something he’d started. Why didn’t he take Kurt’s place and screw in the damn lights himself, get it over and done with once and for all? Those lights didn’t kill his husband, nor the ladder. And it wasn’t Kurt.

It was him. Blaine Anderson-Hummel.

He was the only one to blame.

Panting hard and with blistered palms, he dropped the hoe on the ground at his feet.

He’s the one. He did this. He killed his husband.

He destroyed his own muse.

He stumbled into the house. He rifled through the cabinets for a bottle of whiskey until his hand came in contact with one that felt mostly full, and pulled it down. Except this bottle wasn’t a spare bottle of Jack.

It was Kurt’s solitary bottle of tequila.

Blaine’s first instinct was to toss the bottle up against the wall and smash it. He looked around for an open space to hurl it when he caught sight of his paintings - a new crop of paintings he had started working on for a show in the fall, all of them featuring his muse.

All of them featuring _Kurt_.

Blaine hadn’t set them up in here. Kurt had. He was so proud of them that he’d displayed them. That way he could look at them while Blaine was toiling down at city hall, wasting his talents painting hillsides and sunsets.

But Blaine couldn’t look at them. They represented everything he’d had and lost in an instant. Being in their presence made him realize that he couldn’t go on this way. He couldn’t keep being the artist he was when the only subject he enjoyed painting was gone.

He didn’t want to keep existing when the only man he’d truly ever loved was dead.

He took a swig of the tequila to steady his nerves. With his body burning hot and fire in his veins, he grabbed up the paintings, every last one, and carried them outside, dropping them in an undignified pile on a patch of bare earth away from the house. He doused them with the tequila, gritting his teeth as the liquid assaulted the paint, causing it to bleed down the canvas, distorting the image of Kurt’s beautiful face, twisting it, like Kurt’s body would eventually be, decaying inside his coffin.

When the bottle was just about empty, he rummaged through his pockets for his silver Zippo.

He didn’t smoke, but he liked keeping a lighter on hand for the rare emergency. And why carry around a common plastic BIC when he could spend over a hundred dollars on something he only used once or twice a year? But that was the man Blaine was.

Frivolous.

Over-the-top.

The center of attention.

Who makes a living as an artist anyway? He didn’t even want to be a painter in high school. But when his trust fund matured and he gained control of it, he realized that he had more than enough money to live the life of a Kardashian and never work a day in his life. On a whim, he began to dally with watercolors and voila! He’d unlocked a secret talent.

But he should have gone to law school, the way his mother wanted. Or medical school, the way his father wanted. If he’d done either of those, Kurt still might be alive.

He’d give it all away, call a complete do over and live his life _better_ , to have Kurt back.

He flipped the lighter open. With a click, a small orange flame sprang to life. Blaine tossed the lighter into the pile. The flame barely touched the heap before the whole thing went up in a blaze.

Blaine stood back and watched it burn, watched the past three months of his life go up in a pillar of smoke. The paint melted, the canvas crackled, and sparks of different colors went flying up into the sky.

“There, Kurt,” Blaine grumbled, his throat raw from screaming. “It’s done. All of it. No more muse … no more you … no more paintings. I’ve buried it all with you. I’m done.”

Weak, tired, and sick, Blaine drank himself to sleep while the love of his life and all of his paintings were devoured by flame. It seemed like too much work to trudge back to the house and climb into bed, so he lay down on the hard-packed earth next to the destroyed canvases. They maintained a slow burn, the air around him reeking of chemical smoke. Blaine hoped that it would seep into his sinuses and suffocate his brain. Or maybe an errant cinder would jump onto his alcohol-soaked clothes and he would burn to death in his sleep. Maybe a sudden temperature drop would freeze him to the ground where he lay. Either way, without Kurt, his bed wasn’t his bed, his home wasn’t a home, and Blaine wished more than anything that he could find the quickest and most efficient way to die.

Blaine had prayed that he would black out, surrender to an unconsciousness where time passed but he would have no memory of it, but he had no such luck. Locked inside sleep, he had the same dream over and over - of Kurt falling from the ladder and cracking his head on the wall. And no matter what Blaine did, no matter how fast he ran, no matter if he never went into the house to answer the phone, Kurt still died.

That was an absolute. It never changed.

Which meant that doctor, lawyer, or artist, Kurt might have still died.

At some point before dawn, Blaine heard a rustle, like footfalls on the ground, and he wrestled through the fog in his brain to open his eyes. If he was going to be mauled by coyotes or a mountain lion, he wanted to know. But what he saw was a man – and a _beautiful_ man at that - approaching the pile as if a sick, drunk, and urine-smelling Blaine wasn’t lying a few feet away. The man bent over the burnt canvases, a shaking hand pressed to his lips, and a small, pained gasp escaped his mouth.

Blaine had an overwhelming urge to reach out to the man, to apologize for setting the paintings on fire, but for what reason, he couldn’t explain. Blaine groaned, trying to form words with his dry, sticky tongue. He rolled slightly, blinking his eyes to get a better look at his paintings’ solitary mourner, but when he opened his eyes, the man was gone, so Blaine fell asleep once again.

Blaine was awoken after sunrise by the sound of laughter breaking through the haze of his fever-induced stupor. It was high-pitched and familiar. It sounded like heaven and home and the future Blaine had always dreamed of having, starting during those days when he was completely clueless of Kurt having a crush on him. When Blaine thought back on the people he had unintentionally flaunted in front of him – Jeremiah, Rachel, and to a point, Kurt’s “nemesis” Sebastian - trying to discover who he really was, he could kick himself. Punch himself in the eye for the time he’d wasted.

All the time he would never get back.

It took him longer than necessary to realize what he’d known from the beginning, on that staircase at school where he and Kurt first met.

He wanted Kurt. He just wanted Kurt.

Blaine peeled open his eyes and craned his head in search of the laughter, fixing his gaze back on the house and the patio that he planned to tear out brick by brick by hand as soon as he was physically able. Somewhere in the midst of his pounding headache and the fog that refused to lift, he saw piercing blue eyes – blue like the sky in summer – staring back at him from behind a golden hibiscus. It was in that exact spot that Blaine had planned for his painting, the one he had rushed home to start, of Kurt lounging on a chaise in front of the outdoor fireplace, with the hibiscus plant behind him, its golden hue mimicking the highlights in his hair.

Blaine sat up too quickly to see who the eyes belonged to and his head started to swim. His stomach flipped and before he knew it, he was on his hands and knees, vomiting all over the ground.

Blaine heaved until there was nothing left in him, eyes squeezed shut as his body wrenched the past several hours’ worth of alcohol from him. As quickly as he could, he looked back at the house with watery eyes, but this time, saw nothing. He dropped his head. It felt too heavy for his neck and he let it hang, blinking the remains of hot tears from his eyes. He caught a glimpse of his hands, filthy and paint-stained, the ruined cuffs of his suit reminding him that he was still wearing it. He pictured himself, black Armani suit covered in dirt and vomit, and knew that if Kurt could see him, he would tear him a new one.

Slowly, ever so slowly, and with that thought lodged in his mind giving him an impetus to move, he crawled back to the house on his hands and knees. He felt lousy with fever, but his head began to clear. Small pebbles cut into the wreckage of his hands, but, unable to get to his feet, he continued to crawl, distracting himself by considering his options.

By the time he made it to the patio, his decision seemed pretty certain.

Blaine didn’t want to live, not without Kurt, and even though he could hear the voices of his family and friends trying to convince himself otherwise, his mind was made up.

He would settle his affairs.

He would make sure the family who had always loved him, who had always supported him, who had loved Kurt like one of their own, was provided for.

He would finish his commissions, complete his obligations.

And when the houses were put up on the market and all was said and done, he would find the quickest, most foolproof way of being reunited with his husband again.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Blaine spent five days fighting his fever, barely able to move, completely unable to keep anything down, and he was grateful for every excruciating second of it. It gave him something to think about besides the inevitable. Part of him hoped he wouldn’t get better, and that the illness would do his job for him. He slept so deeply during that time, he _thought_ he was dead, but instead of a peaceful eternity spent with Kurt, there was nothing – just endless darkness until he woke again.

And that scared him the most.

Because if there was nothing to go to after death, his Kurt wasn’t only gone in the physical sense. It meant that he no longer existed, and after their relatively short life together, Blaine would never see his beloved husband again.

On the sixth day, he had enough. His legs trembled and his insides threatened to turn him inside out with every step he took, but he didn’t care.

It was time to get started.

Blaine refused to look at his phone. He wasn’t going to check his messages or his emails. He didn’t want to see pleas from his parents and his brother, begging him to call them back, wondering how he was doing, asking him how they could help. He got a taste of that at Kurt’s funeral, and each idea his family had was the same.

“Let me take you out to Cali,” from his brother. “Some sun on your face, sand under your feet, the sea breeze in your hair. You’ll be a new man.”

“Let’s all go to Europe,” from his father. “We’ll take the year off and travel across the continent. It’ll take your mind off things. Maybe we can find a gallery willing to open up your new show there. Huh? Whaddya say?”

“Why don’t we go back to the Philippines?” from his mother. “Reconnect with family. You have cousins you haven’t seen in a dog’s age. It’ll be good for you.”

They all wanted to take him away from his life, from his troubles … from everything that reminded him of his husband. Blaine knew that they meant well, but he couldn’t. He had a connection to this house, not because it felt like a home, but because it felt like a mausoleum.

He couldn’t just leave.

He also couldn’t bear to see any messages from Kurt’s dad. He hadn’t called the man since the funeral. He felt like a heel for not letting Burt know that he was alive … for the time being. Kurt’s dad had always been the one authority figure in Blaine’s life who was the easiest for him to talk to. If he texted Burt or called him, Blaine would probably spill the beans, then everyone Blaine knew would be on his doorstep, ready to spend 24/7 sitting vigil by his bedside to make sure he didn’t down a bottle of pills.

It had occurred to Blaine that planning on killing himself was the worst way he could pay Burt Hummel back for his kindness, his acceptance, and his trust. The man had lost a wife, a stepson, and a son. Now, unbeknownst to him, he was about to lose a son-in-law, too.

In that vein, what Blaine was doing _could_ be considered unforgivable.

But he couldn’t concern himself with that, so he switched gears to something that aggravated the heck out of him, something he wouldn’t be sorry to leave behind.

Blaine knew he’d probably accrued over a dozen messages from city hall, calling with ideas for his painting, and he couldn’t care less. They had paid him in advance. They would get what he chose to paint for them and like it. So what if they threatened to sue him? He’d like to see them try.

This first painting, the one Kurt had chided him for putting off, was supposed to be a dramatic landscape view from a hilltop east of the county where they lived. He had planned to drive up there and map out the area, do some preliminary sketches, gauge his perspective. But those plans had also included a picnic lunch with Kurt, and then outdoor sex on their favorite blanket. Considering that that was no longer an option, _Screw it,_  he thought.  _I’m gonna wing it._

It wouldn’t be a stretch. Blaine had this particular location set to memory. He and Kurt had driven all over it in Blaine’s Mustang convertible. They knew the place by heart - where the roads led, the dips and curves that passed beneath the oak trees, where the creek crossed the old cow road, and the man-made trails that carved their lazy ways up and up.

He and Kurt had made love along most of those: in the back seat of his car parked hidden from view, even lying out on the grass under the sun on one or two more adventurous occasions.

One time in the rain.

Blaine sighed. He chose a blank canvas from a pile of prepped ones on the floor and dropped it unceremoniously onto his easel.

This wasn’t going to be his best work. Far from it, as a matter of fact.

Why put one hundred percent into it? If you’ve seen one stinking landscape, you’ve seen them all. As long as it was one step up from something he’d find hanging in a Marriott, it would be fine.

Blaine barely regarded the canvas before he started dropping paint on it, haphazardly in some cases, not giving a single fuck when the grass bled into the sky too far on one side, or how the hill looked more like a humpbacked snake than a majestically sweeping expanse of green. In his head, he could hear Kurt chuckling, that cute way he snorted when laughing got the best of him and he couldn’t stop. Blaine grinned at the thought of Kurt standing beside him, teasing him over how lopsided his painting was, how it looked like someone on hallucinogenic mushrooms had painted it, and how Blaine would shut him up by reaching out an acrylic stained hand and threatening one of his favorite Alexander McQueen shirts.

“Blaine Anderson-Hummel!” Kurt would screech. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Try me,” Blaine would reply, and very soon the painting would be abandoned, Blaine chasing after Kurt throughout the house, leaping over furniture and dodging drying canvases along the way. Kurt would race outside, betting that the open stretch of land would give him the advantage, but he would also start stripping off his precious shirt along the way, knowing he would get caught.

Kurt was more athletic than Blaine sometimes gave him credit for, and Blaine often wondered if Kurt let him catch up on purpose.

Eventually the chase would lead back to the house, the shirt discarded carefully on an obliging chair, and that’s when Blaine would win.

He _always_ won.

He’d grab Kurt around the waist and drag his body against him, panting and flushed and simply perfect in every way. Paint would end up everywhere by the time they were done making love – stuck to Kurt’s hair where Blaine had run his fingers through it, streaking the wood boards where Blaine had raked his nails along the floor, a rainbow of fingerprints all over Kurt’s pale skin, down his chest where Blaine traced the outlines of his muscles, around his wrists where Blaine pinned him down, curling over his hips where Blaine held Kurt against him.

Blaine stopped daydreaming when he felt tears well in his eyes. He wiped his cheeks on the sleeve of his work shirt, blinking away memories of an afternoon spent lying in a colorful mess on the floor, capped off by Kurt rolling over onto Blaine’s body to make a masterpiece of his own.

Blaine looked at his painting, prepared to mock the disaster he had wrought as a way of leaving that memory behind. He pictured the travesty of having this worthless piece of shit hanging at city hall with his name emblazoned on a brass plaque underneath, and he felt wryly satisfied. But then he stopped … and he stared. His pallet slipped from his hands and crashed to the floor, spattering his shoes and marring the wood.

Gone was the bleeding paint and the humpback snake. At some point during his fantasizing, he had fixed the painting. It had changed from monstrosity to memory - and a vivid one at that - of the hillside in spring, wildflowers dotting the grass, the sun a suggestion in the quality of the light and the shadows it threw. If he had been aiming for perfection, consciously attempting to create a painting that conveyed beauty and the promise of new life, he would never have been able to come close to this. But recognition of his own exceptional technique wasn’t what drew his eye; it was the stretch of road in the distance. On it, a candy apple red Mustang driving along with its top down, and two passengers inside. Blaine assumed he was the one behind the wheel, but the man in the driver’s seat was most definitely Kurt, turning to wave over his shoulder, a sublime smile on his face.

He looked so happy, so carefree.

He looked so _real_.

Blaine reached out a hand, fingertips hovering over the place where Kurt’s face looked up at him.

“What the---?”

_Honk, honk._

Blaine jumped at the sound of a car horn coming from his driveway, but once the surprise subsided, it swiftly turned to annoyance. The idea that someone who couldn’t get him by phone had driven all the way out to his house infuriated him.

Blaine considered not answering it out of spite, but the urge to throw open his door and hurl insults at this intruder was too overwhelming to resist. He left the painting on its easel and stomped through the house to the front door.

_Honk, honk._

“Yeah, yeah, I get it!” Blaine screamed. “You’re so important, you can’t even get out of your car and ring the damn bell!”

_Honk, honk._

“Come on, Blaine!” a familiar voice called. “Hurry up! We’re going to be late!”

Blaine stopped cold in his tracks. He tried to swallow the gigantic lump that had materialized in his throat at the sound of that voice, but he couldn’t. For what seemed like forever, he couldn’t make himself move.

_Honk, honk._

“Blaine! Come on, baby! You promised we’d make love after lunch! I have the blanket!”

“Kurt?” Blaine breathed, running for the door. _That_ was his impetus to move. To see his husband again, to hold him.

To make love to him.

“Kurt, honey?”

He couldn’t believe he was saying it, as if Kurt would actually be there. He wanted to slap himself for even thinking it was a possibility. But there he was, racing for the door, hoping against hope of what he would see once he opened it.

_Honk, ho -_

The sound cut off when the door flew open, and for a second – No. What’s less than a second? - Blaine heard a laugh and saw a flash of blue eyes in the passenger seat of his Mustang.

An uncovered Mustang he kept covered 24/7.

Blaine stood in the doorway, but his brain was still running, trying to reconcile what he was looking at.

A car. It was just a car. Nothing supernatural or special about it.

Blaine stepped outside slowly and looked closer at it, examining it to find an answer as to why a car he barely drove had been honking on its own, and how a cover that fit snuggly had suddenly blown off.

Blaine searched the driveway, the house, and the field beyond for some sign that someone, some stupid neighbor’s kid, had been pulling pranks. He covered the Mustang again, concentrating on something other than the image of Kurt standing in the driveway, honking the horn, praying it would stop his hands from shaking.

Blaine took one final look around before retreating back to the house. He double-locked the door behind him, feeling ridiculous when he did. He returned to the painting, to the peaceful hillside and the happy couple in the car driving off into the sunset.

A revulsion filled him.

It was too much.

It was all too much.

He couldn’t let city hall have this memory, and he couldn’t put on public display something that would never be again.

He grabbed a squeeze bottle of paint thinner and doused the painting, watching the colors run and drip, the couple in their little red car smearing down the canvas and disappearing over the edge. He watched until the picturesque hillside was reduced to nothing more than slop. Then he turned his back on his memories and went back to bed.

***

“Blaine! Are you going to wash my back or not?”

“Hold up, baby! I’m … uh … doing something”

“What are you …? Oh, God! Tell me you’re not masturbating again!”

“Ha! What if I am?”

“You know, my love, I’m pretty sure you’re going to wear that thing out with over use!”

“Never!”

“Then what are you …? Blaine! Are you sketching me!? I’m in the _shower_!”

“I know. That’s why I’m sketching you.”

“But, I’m naked, Blaine! And I … wait a minute … it can’t be _that_ big, can it?”

“Yup.”

“For real?”

“For real.”

“Are you …?”

“Kurt, I just spent half-an-hour with your dick in my mouth. I think I know how big it is.”

“Oh. Well, continue on, then.”

Blaine woke to the sound of his own laughing. He felt so light, so happy. He laughed so hard that tears leaked from his eyes, and he shook his head, which caused him to wake. The more conscious of his surroundings he became, the more aware he was of two things: a grainy sensation on his fingertips, and the muted sound of falling water.

It was raining again.

Blaine opened his eyes. He really didn’t want to, but he was curious as to the identity of the substance on his skin. Eyes adjusting, vision clearing, a sketch pad and a charcoal pencil came into view, lying beside him on the bed.

He had been drawing in his sleep.

It was unusual, but it had happened before. He lifted up on his elbows to get a better look at the drawing. It was crude, but amazingly, still one of his best. He blinked away more sleep in order to identify the subject.

Realization shot like an arrow through his chest, but he was somehow not surprised.

He had drawn Kurt taking a shower, hands tangled in his hair, steam rising around his body, a sly half-smile on his lips at being watched.

Blaine loved that smile.

He could get so lost in that smile.

He got lost in it now, so lost that he barely remembered the rain. But not _rain_ , he began to realize as the memory dissolved and Blaine’s mind began to wake.

The shower.

And above the sound of falling water, he heard another, more magnificent sound.

The sound of someone humming.

Blaine bolted from his bed. It had to be real this time! There couldn’t be any doubt! The bathroom was only a few feet from the bed where he lay. He could hear the water and the humming as clear as day. Blaine raced into the bathroom. The air was thick with steam, the mirrors covered in condensation. His heart leapt as the sounds became louder, and then a telltale giggle.

“Blaine! Is that you? I …”

Blaine threw the curtains open, ready to embrace his wet husband with open arms.

Everything stopped.

No water.

Steam gone.

The mirrors unobscured and dry.

He stood in shock, staring, mouth agape, at an empty shower of cream-colored tile.

Blaine was caught between emotions. A desire to howl in anger welled up in his chest, along with the beginnings of a complete nervous breakdown.

He chose anger, feeling it best if he stayed sane a little longer.

With an animalistic growl, he tore down the shower curtain. He stormed through the bathroom, pulling the mirrors off the walls, tossing bottles left and right. He punched the tile, cracking the porcelain and cutting his hand. The sharp stab of pain pulled his focus. He stared at his bleeding hand, his chest burning as his heart pounded like a runaway train. He stood among the wreckage of the master bath and sighed. So much rage. So much sadness. So much useless destruction.

None of it was going to bring Kurt back.

Blaine made his way to the kitchen, past the wasted pallet on the floor, past the painting that still dripped acrylic, and headed for the sink. He turned on the cold water and stuck his hand underneath. Head bowed over the basin, he watched the blood from his cuts rinse away. His eyes drifted closed as the water soothed his stinging hand, and for a moment, he could imagine Kurt draping an arm around him, fussing over him, kissing his temples, massaging his neck, telling him everything would be alright.

When his hand went from stinging to numb, Blaine fumbled for the faucet handle with his eyes closed. He shut the water off and, in the silence, Blaine heard a sigh that wasn’t his own.

He didn’t want to open his eyes. He wanted Kurt back, but he was done seeing ghosts.

He wanted it all to end.

“Paint it,” he heard a quiet voice say. “Paint what you want.”

When Blaine opened his eyes, the blue eyes he knew had been there were gone.

 


	3. Chapter 3

The voice told him to paint what he wanted. Now, Blaine had to decide what that was.

The answer was simple.

Blaine wanted an ending.

That’s what he had thought right before he heard that silent command.

He wanted it all to end – the pain, the sadness, the hallucinations, but mostly, his life without Kurt.

So that was the secret then. He would paint an ending to it all –  _his_  ending. How this all plays out starting with Kurt dying, these days of torture, and then … well, however Blaine thought to do himself in. He hadn’t given it any thought. It was a simple thing to say that he wanted to end his own life, but the logistics of it were another monster entirely. Here he had spent the past few days feeling like his days were numbered, that his body would tear itself to pieces, but he was slowly getting better.

So the task fell on him.

Blaine returned to his easel. He tossed the ruined canvas aside and replaced it with a longer one, one with enough room to create a multiple panel work. He collected up his pallet, satisfied with the acrylics that were left and not giving a second thought to the puddle of paint he was standing in. He picked up a brush, not particularly concerned with whether it was camel hair or synthetic, medium tip or broad, and held it over the churning sea of tacky paint. He needed to choose his first color, one that would tie together the overall theme.

That should be relatively simple. He was painting a triptych of his own death. He would start with black or red.

But when he tried to dip the bristles into one of those two colors, he found the brush called somewhere else. He clenched his teeth and tried again with the same frustrating result – he’d reach for the red, but the brush was pulled to the blue.

“Fine,” he growled. “Fine, fine, fine, fucking fine!” He pulled up a huge dollop of Ultramarine Blue and hurled it at the canvas, letting the paint drop carelessly with an obscene sounding sploitch, the hulking mass crawling grotesquely down.

_“Well, that’s mature,” Kurt said, watching as Blaine put the finishing touches on his latest painting. “I don’t think the gallery is going to want that one.”_

_“I don’t care,” Blaine returned, not bothering to look at his husband standing by his side. “Paintings are all about emotion, how they make you feel, and this one’s making me feel better.”_

_“A painting of us barbecuing the neighbor’s dog?” Kurt tilted his head to the side to take in the vivid imagery of a smug Blaine, dressed in a toque and a gingham apron that said ‘Kiss the Cook’ across the front, tongs raised triumphantly, and in their metal grip, the charred leg of Roy and Sylvia Harding’s Airedale Terrier, Mitzy._

_“You know, I would think you would have more sympathy. The little jerk bit me,” Blaine griped, indicating his bandaged hand._

_“You bit him back!” Kurt chuckled. “I think that makes you even.”_

_“I don’t,” Blaine mumbled._

_Kurt inched closer to the painting, appreciating quietly all the detail Blaine had put in – the grain in the wood of the red washed picnic table; the springy hair on the carcass of the dead dog; even Kurt’s own ensemble of capris pants and a tailored Marc Jacobs shirt, with his signature hippo broach affixed to the lapel._

_Blaine watched his husband’s eyes as they traveled over his work, his lip pinched between his teeth, his brow furrowed in concentration. Kurt turned his head suddenly, blushing at getting caught admiring his husband’s handiwork on such a gruesome subject._

_Owing to love, knowledge, and familiarity, added with a dash of the fact that, after so many years of sharing the same heart and the same mind, they often thought alike, both men moved in at the exact same time for the kiss that seemed to linger in the air, waiting for them to experience it._

_Kurt gave a sidelong look at the painting and chuckled when he noticed how close his face was to a screaming and horrified Sylvia Harding, rending her clothes in an expression of her grief._

_“Okay, I’ve got to get away from this thing.” Kurt ducked his head and caught a glimpse of Blaine’s bandaged hand, a spot of red blossoming on the wrapping. “Oh, sweetheart!” He took Blaine’s hand in his and started to undo the gauze. “We have to rewrap this so it doesn’t get infected.” Kurt tutted disapprovingly. “I wish you would let me take you to the hospital.”_

_“Why? When I’ve got you here to play my nurse?” Blaine put his pallet down and wrapped an arm around Kurt’s waist, dragging him close._

_Blaine wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. Kurt pulled a face of mock horror._

_“Come on, Kurt,” Blaine whispered. “I think I need to undress so you can take my temperature.”_

_Kurt threw his head back and laughed. Then he kissed Blaine on the mouth, chuckling when his husband released him to undo the buttons of his shirt one-handed._

_“You know,” Kurt whispered against Blaine’s lips, grimacing at the confession he was about to make, “charred dog notwithstanding, it really is an excellent painting.”_

Blaine stepped back to view his work, but once again, what had started out as one thing had developed into another. He had painted several paintings within a painting – an image of himself standing and staring at a painting with Kurt by his side, staring at a painting of Blaine staring at the same painting with Kurt by his side, standing and staring at the same painting on and on for infinity. In the painting, Blaine wore the same clothes he did now, his untidy curls plastered flat on one side of his head, his pallet dangling from his hand with the paint swirled together in a blotchy mess. Blaine regarded the painting closely, his heart racing. If Kurt was standing a behind him and to the right in all these paintings, could that possibly mean …

Blaine jumped when a hand touched his shoulder. He turned, and a face closed in on his - cool lips pressing gently against his mouth. Blaine’s heart stopped when the face pulled away and he saw those blue eyes that he missed more with every passing day.

Kurt looked perfect, his ethereal beauty completely intact, the way Blaine remembered him. Kurt smiled at his husband, sorrow shifting his features.

“It really is an excellent painting,” he said, motioning to Blaine’s artwork with a nod of his chin.

Blaine didn’t want to look away, but he felt compelled to look back at the painting when Kurt mentioned it. Blaine had painted forever - the two of them together, stretching on into the future for an eternity. If he had to be honest with himself, that’s what he wanted.

He didn’t want to die. He wanted his husband.

He turned back to Kurt, to ask him how he could make that happen, but Kurt was gone.

***

Blaine spent the following three days straight at his easel, the words _paint what you want_ repeating in his ears. He didn’t eat, he didn’t sleep. All he did was paint. He wanted his life with his husband back, so he started from the beginning, when he and Kurt first met. Blaine painted Kurt on the staircase at Dalton Academy, the sun shining in from the glass dome ceiling creating a halo effect. He looked like an angel in his leather blazer and sunglasses, trying to sneak his way into the “lair of the competition” as he had put it on many occasions. He painted the way Kurt’s eyes held his the first time he sang to him – Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” in the senior commons. He painted the blush that had risen to Kurt’s cheeks when Blaine sang a particularly racy verse, and the admiration in his expression when he was done and Kurt applauded.

He painted a young Kurt auditioning for NYADA, emphasizing those _say something_ hips that never failed to capture Blaine’s imagination.

He painted the phone call they shared over Thanksgiving after Blaine had cheated on him, showing Kurt sitting on his fire escape in New York City with Blaine standing beneath a ladder on the McKinley High School stage, waiting to perform. Then he painted every phone call after on a wall-size canvas in multiple panels, changing their features as they aged, and on their respective ring fingers - faint at first, but becoming darker as time passed and they fell deeper in love - a single red thread that connected them.

During the course of those days, Blaine burned through his acrylics and had to call in a favor to another local artist to get more. While he waited for his shipment to arrive, he sketched. He went through sketch pad after sketch pad, finally resorting to paper from his printer, and after that, the newspapers stacked by the front door, waiting to be recycled. He painted and sketched his and Kurt’s entire life together, and when he was done, when the final painting was set aside to dry, he waited for something to happen. A voice. A giggle. Another kiss.

 _Anything_.

Blaine climbed into bed, his muscles sore, his eyes crossed from exhaustion. He fell asleep waiting and awoke the next morning to the sun warm on his face, his skin and clothes thoroughly stained, and his husband nowhere to be seen.

He felt like a fool. A grief stricken fool, but still a fool. He had made it all up in his mind. He had indulged in this fantasy for far too long, missed his deadlines, and pushed aside his plans.

Well, not any more.

Blaine knew what he needed to do, and he had the adrenaline coursing through his body to actually do it, along with a bottle of Xanax, a bottle of Halcion, and two bottles of vodka.

With any luck, it would be quick and painless.

He hurried into a living room littered floor to ceiling with pictures of Kurt, paintings of Kurt, charcoal sketches on every possible surface of Kurt, moving to the walls when he ran out of paper and his replacement paints and canvases had not yet arrived. There were so many images of Kurt throughout the room that Blaine almost missed him, wandering through the paintings, fingers hovering over, tracing the outlines of his own face. Blaine came within inches of him on his way to the kitchen, stopping short at the intense look in his shimmering eyes.

Kurt still looked ethereal, but he also looked _real_.

“They’re beautiful,” he gasped, gazing at them in awe. “Every single one is just … _beautiful_. They may be your finest work.”

Blaine felt himself choke. This had to be a dream, because the reality was too fantastic to believe. But Kurt’s eyes looked sad, and Blaine didn’t understand why.

“Are you really here?” Blaine asked. “Or are you going to haunt me forever?”

Kurt quirked an eyebrow. “Do you want me to?”

“I want you _here_ ,” Blaine said. “I need you, Kurt. I need you to come back to me.”

Kurt looked at the paintings and drawings. “You painted my past, Blaine.” He reached out to caress an image of the two of them locked in an embrace, eyes closed as they kissed, caught up in their own little world as parents with children and park vendors raced by, eager to get out of the sudden downpour. Even Blaine had to admit that it looked so real, he could almost see the people move, the children struggle to break free and splash in the puddles, Kurt’s lips against his.

It was their first kiss as New Yorkers.

It was an _epic_ kiss.

“I need you to paint my future,” Kurt explained, beginning to fade. “Then, you can have me.”

Blaine shook his head, exhaustion turning desperation to anger. He had painted for three days straight just to have Kurt. Now here he was, disappearing again because Blaine hadn’t done enough.

“ _What_ future, Kurt? You didn’t get a future! You didn’t get a future because of _me_! Because I fucked up!” Blaine was screaming, even though he didn’t mean to. He was lost, lonely, and felt like he was going crazy. He was standing in the center of what could easily be labeled the creepiest memorial to his dead husband ever, arguing with a ghost. But none of that mattered because Blaine was tired of waiting, tired of being tested and taunted. He had a future planned for him and Kurt, and he was ready to get back to it.

“You’re here now! I don’t care if I never paint again! I don’t  _want_  to paint! All I want is you!”

But Kurt shook his head, backing away, his body becoming more and more faint with every step. Blaine panicked. He rushed at Kurt, determination in his blood-shot hazel eyes, ready to claim back his life and his husband, but as Blaine reached Kurt, he dissolved before Blaine’s eyes. Blaine stood alone in the mid-morning light, listening as the rest of the world sprang to life outside – birds singing, insects chirping. Blaine hadn’t realized that while Kurt was there everything had gone quiet, like time had stopped. But now it marched back on with absolutely no respect at all for Blaine’s frustration and pain.

“Fine,” Blaine said, a scowl souring his features. “If that’s the way you’re going to be about it, then we’ll play this game your way.”

Blaine put a blank canvas on his easel and grabbed a different pallet. This pallet contained various bright oils – a medium he wasn’t all too fond of, but he didn’t want to waste time rummaging through his acrylics for the colors he needed when this one was so readily available.

Besides, Blaine considered oils a bitch to work with. It seemed fitting.

Blaine didn’t even take a moment to regard the canvas, to try and search out the painting hiding within. He knew what he wanted. He wanted Kurt, in his bed, naked and panting with want, skin flushed with desire, writhing against the sheets as he dreamed of Blaine joining him beneath the covers and relieving him of his agony.

Blaine attacked the canvas, and not just with a brush. He moved through the paint with his fingers as he defined the muscular lines of Kurt’s arms. He cut through the oil with his pallet knife, giving depth and dimension to the comforter on the bed. He sliced and manipulated, the colors blending till what he had intended to be a simple portrait of his husband lying in bed became the culmination of all his passion, bleeding through his pores and coursing from his fingertips. Unlike his other paintings, which took a matter of hours, this one he worked on all day. He didn’t notice when the sun began to sink into the horizon and the room became black.

He knew Kurt’s body so well he could paint it with his eyes closed.

And the image was perfect – Kurt’s alabaster skin glowing against a frame of red satin sheets, plump lips parted, hooded eyes searching, his arm outstretched, pointing to where Blaine stood beside his masterpiece.

Blaine stared at the painting, and the more he looked, the more he could swear that Kurt’s image was breathing.

Blaine set his pallet down and ran a grungy hand through his hair, spreading paint along with it over the strands. He was worn out, breathless, almost completely spent, but one word from Kurt, his beautiful Kurt, would have sent him running to their bed.

If Kurt were there.

If Kurt was still alive.

He touched the frame of the canvas as a breeze spiraled through the room, carrying with it the most incredible sound.

“Blai-ne,” a voice called to him. “Blaine, when are you coming to bed?”

Blaine wasn’t breathing. He couldn’t. A single noise, a single movement, and the voice on the wind might be scared away.

But he needed to know.

“K-Kurt?” Blaine stammered, sure that only the silence of the house would answer him.

“Blaine …” The voice - so light, so fair, so enticing and heartbreaking and miraculous - answered instead. “Please, stop painting and come to bed. You have all day to paint. We only have the night to spend together.”

Blaine backed away from the painting, gazing at it in reverence, expecting it to do something other-worldly … or maybe disappear. But it didn’t. The painting remained, and so did Kurt.

“Blaine Anderson-Hummel! I am going to count to five and if I …”

Blaine made it to him in three seconds, and that night, while making love to the man he thought he’d never see again, he realized something so incredible, so indefinable, he felt no reason to try and explain it.

He could spend the rest of his life with his husband, as long as he painted it that way.

***

“Oh, Blaine!” Kurt whispered, clutching tightly to his husband’s arm. “They’re gorgeous! Every single one of them is your best work, hands down!”

“You say that because you’re _in_ every single one of them.” Blaine walked Kurt from painting to painting, stopping long enough in between so that his husband could examine each and every intricate detail of the individual pieces.

Kurt bobbed his head from side to side before he answered. “True, true. I do lend a certain, how do you say, _sophistication_ to your art. I won’t lie.”

Kurt didn’t go out in public often – at least, not where anyone knew them. But being photographed by the paparazzi couldn’t be avoided. Blaine had shot from semi-famous to superstardom in a few short months, all thanks to his muse.

Blaine tried his hardest to make Kurt as inconspicuous as possible so he could accompany him to the gallery and see his artwork hung and lighted, properly on display. That was a magical moment, Kurt always said - wandering through the paintings the night before the public got the chance to see them, knowing that he was one of the first people to ever lay eyes on them.

Kurt was dressed in head to toe black by way of a gorgeous Vivienne Westwood-esque suit of Blaine’s design, his head covered in a stylish Asian-inspired silk scarf, with large Jackie O sunglasses obscuring his face. Blaine and Kurt walked huddled close together, appearing like a normal couple to anyone who saw them. Speculation circulated quickly when Blaine emerged from his cottage after months of isolation, with a stack of new paintings in the back seat of his Mustang, that Blaine Anderson-Hummel, no longer the grieving widower, had found himself a new muse.

At first, the art community criticized him harshly, but they quickly forgave him, falling completely in love with his newest work – an homage to the brief but brilliant life of his fashion designer husband and high school sweetheart, Kurt Hummel. Only Kurt and Blaine’s overjoyed families knew the truth. They might not understand completely, but they didn’t care, as long as they got Kurt back … especially Burt, who’d said he didn’t care if Kurt were the devil himself. He was just ecstatic to have his son, in whatever form, on earth.

“How many are there?” Kurt gazed down the line of paintings, trying to take them all in at once, including the one that made this trip possible – a painting of him and Blaine strolling through the gallery, dressed the way they were now, admiring Blaine’s art. It was the painting that greeted visitors on their way in, and was titled (appropriately) “An Afternoon at the Gallery with Kurt”.

“Right now … about one-hundred and fifty.”

Kurt snapped his head left to look into his husband’s proud face, jaw dropped in disbelief.

“One-hundred and fifty? That’s almost …” He did some calculations in his head, coming up with an answer that was mind-boggling “… _five months_ we get to spend together!”

“Try two-and-a-half years,” Blaine corrected, preening with delight at the wide-eyed stare his revelation earned him.

“Two and a half years?” Kurt gasped. “But … but how?”

“This is how.” Blaine escorted Kurt through a set of double doors to a larger room, where the walls had been re-painted white to better display the art. The room held easily eighteen wall-sized murals, each with a multitude of different panels depicting Blaine and Kurt vacationing in Paris, sitting in a gondola in Venice, exploring the Grand Canyon, or just ‘living’ – washing dishes, walking a dog, shopping at the supermarket … and quite a few of them making love.

Kurt was quiet for a long time, staring at the next few years of his life as Blaine had planned them, and for a moment, Blaine started to fear that this wasn’t what Kurt wanted.

“Kurt?” Blaine felt an unnerving weight settle in his chest. He didn’t want to lose Kurt. Not again. But what had he forgotten? What was missing? “Kurt? For the love of God, Kurt! Tell me …”

“I love them!” Kurt sniffled, throwing himself into Blaine’s arms. “I love it! All of it! Our life together! It’s _wonderful_!”

“You really like it?” Blaine asked, a little overwhelmed by Kurt in his arms, surrounded by images of their future.

“I do!” Blaine wasn’t done holding him, but Kurt pulled away, eagerly leading his husband farther in the room to examine those paintings as well. “But now we have to start planning farther ahead,” Kurt insisted. “I mean, where are the paintings of me sewing and designing? I fully intend on working.”

“What?” Blaine looked dumbfounded. “How do you …?”

“We’ll cross that bridge later,” Kurt said, dismissing Blaine’s objection with the wave of his hand. “And if you get a dog, I want a cat. And I expect you to make me age gracefully - no premature balding or pot belly. I mean, you’ve seen my dad.”

Blaine rolled his eyes, but he listened carefully, setting Kurt’s notes to memory.

“Of course,” he said, placing a kiss to the top of Kurt’s head, over the scarf, wishing it was Kurt’s beautiful, walnut-colored hair tickling his nose with its sweet scent of jasmine and vanilla. “But, what would you like to do now? The show doesn’t open till tomorrow. We have the whole day.”

Kurt’s lips curled into a devilish grin. He walked straight to a painting done in muted, neutral shades, of the two of them in bed, Blaine hovering over Kurt’s body, looking down at Kurt with lust blown eyes, occasional highlights of black and red suggesting exactly what moment of desire the painting portrayed.

“This one.” Kurt’s voice turned silky, a wash of subtle seduction that made Blaine burn to take his husband right there, right then. “I want this one.”

“You just want to have sex,” Blaine teased, taking Kurt’s arm.

Kurt’s eyes twinkled as he pulled Blaine towards the door.

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” he said, biting his lower lip and giving Blaine the perfect inspiration for his next painting.

 


End file.
